Back when I was in the middle of recognizing all of my patterns of love addiction, I clung to this phrase like a life raft.

Now I just see it as a simple truth. Not something that needs to be reached for or sought after. Just the effortless process of a life that is always expanding.

Looking around at the people who have come into my life in the past few years, there are many faces I never saw coming. Some of them came and went, others will be here forever. Some are people I knew when I was little, before I learned what it felt like to have love ripped out of my hands or dangled in front of me like a moving target, who are back in my life as if to remind me that love has always been here, and that it has the capacity to renew itself.

It’s not just me. I have the pleasure of hearing from an extensive network of friends, members of different communities I am lucky enough to belong to, family members, and people I meet in coffee shops and bars and flea markets around the world that this somewhat hackneyed internet maxim is a natural fact.

Whenever I walk through a cemetery I will occasionally be drawn to a particular headstone or another. Sometimes it will be because of a crazy statue of like an angel holding a trident riding a unicorn and it’s all, “I’m not dead! YOU’RE dead!” Or else it’ll be some unimaginably badass name like ‘Marvel Lion.’ These people will never meet me, and yet I love them.

And so I am convinced that it never ends. We just keep being found out as lovable forever and ever. Just to be safe, I may put some money aside for a big fuck off headstone. Couldn’t hurt.

We are in the final days of the Year of the Snake, which in Chinese astrology represents growth, transformation, and lived wisdom. Chinese/Lunar New Year happens on February 17th, which also plays host to an eclipse, so even if you’re not a glutton for astrology like me, you’re probably feeling it. The past month has not been smooth sailing for anyone, personally or collectively. I have definitely felt the extremes of intense vulnerability and reactivity, both of which seemed to come out of nowhere. So if that’s how you’ve been feeling… you’re not alone.

The snake has to find rough edges to rub up against in order to create a tear in the old skin so that it can break free from it. This sounds pretty fucking painful, which makes me feel like I must be doing something right, because lately I’ve experienced a sort of disorientation that has made me question everything. And maybe that’s what this time is for. We need the rough edges to help liberate us from the version of ourselves that we are growing out of.

Our scars live on the old skin, yet we cling to it. I’ve been asking myself what stories it’s time to let go of. You’re too much. You’re not enough. You will always be this. You will never be that. You must be perfect to be loved. I’ve taken stock of the wounds that I’m tired of protecting. I’ve felt around in the dark for a hand that wasn’t there and placed my own over my heart instead. And then I let myself just exist in the darkness.

I don’t really have a vision for what the new skin will look or feel like… all I know is that I’m releasing my loyalty to the old skin. It’s served its function. We are all ready, I think. And even if we aren’t, nature is taking its course with or without our consent. The best thing we can do for ourselves is get all the way on board, because otherwise the old skin will become a straitjacket. We will not be able to move, let alone grow.

I’m not ready, but I’m ready to be ready. I’m not shying away from the rough edges even if it hurts for the moment. I know it will be worth it. I hope that if you’re reading this, you’re embracing the pain of renewal, and that you’ll share your secrets with me for how to best do that. We’re all figuring this out together, but I am excited to see the dewy complexions of everyone who really did let the Year of the Snake shed the parts of them that were not meant to be carried forward.

Up next: the Year of the Fire Horse. What an absolutely fuck off punk rock image that is. This is one of many reasons why Chinese New Year > basic ass Gregorian new year. Let’s shed our shit so that we can be fully available for the wild ride that the horse has in store for us. <3

“Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity…” - Gilda Radner

One of the things I like best about traveling is that you just never know. From the moment you leave your house and all the accoutrements of your life and routines, it’s all bets off. You have no idea whether the Uber driver will be in a bad mood, or if the flight will actually take off on time, or who you’ll sit next to on the plane. Then you arrive at your destination and—if you’re like me—you’ve done just enough planning to insure you have a place to stay in a decent neighborhood. The rest is in the outstretched hands of the Universe.

When I travel I am absolutely thrilled by not knowing what’s around the next corner, or what’s at the end of the enchanted alleyway, or who I’ll meet at the next bar. A couple of years ago I was in Vienna (because I am a child of the 80’s and Billy Joel hasn’t lied to me yet) and after arriving late in the evening I dropped my bags and set off into the city to let things happen to me. I doubled back on what looked like a dive bar from the outside, but on the inside was a very cool cocktail bar where one of Europe’s leading mixologists was guest bartending. In a suit, no less. (Hi Marcus!!! Go see him at the Savoy if you’re in London.)

After a couple rounds of next-level martinis, I wound up getting adopted by a gorgeous 24 year-old German girl named Kimberley who invited me to go wine tasting with her the next day in the Austrian countryside. Like, say less Kim. The next morning I met her at the train station and we set off on an hour long journey that dropped us at a nondescript spot in the middle of actual nowhere. She said she believed the winery was just up that hill, so we hiked it. And sure enough, there was the most incredible winery where an incredible artist called Flowsofly was having a show.

We then crossed highways and literal rivers on foot, now carrying framed art, to two more wineries. Just as we finished our tasting at the second one, it started pouring… but we still had one more stop! Kimberly had the in for a bougey party at a cathedral in a village called Krems an der Donau. So we showed up dripping wet and dried our hair with the Dyson hand dryer in the bathroom, drank from the open bar, and ate fried food on the street after.

With more than my fair share of experiences like these, how is it that I spend so much of my day-to-day life clinging to any semblance of certainty? Every path I have chosen that is well-worn and clearly marked has made me deeply unhappy. I need to explore or I will die. And yet I find myself futilely attempting to envisage a future that is perfectly defined. I consult tarot cards and ChatGPT and friends to tell me what’s going to happen next. I over-think and second-guess and pathologize which never actually leads to a certain outcome anyway, all to find out how it ends. And when I said this all out loud to my brilliant friend Candace, she said, “Death. What happens in the end is death.”

For all of my future-tripping and meaning-making, I have chosen a career that is famously uncertain. I chose to leave a life and relationship behind that was as close as it comes to being able to guarantee a certain kind of future, and instead rebuild a life from scratch at 37. I still take big leaps of faith and spend my days writing like every word is an essential contribution to humanity’s endowment, even when it is shamefully, aggressively bad. So I’ve come to realize in this first month of 2026 that what’s actually more important to me than certainty is stability, and that’s something real we can actually create for ourselves.

Stability is the byproduct of living in a way that supports your happiness. For me that looks like showing up as authentically as I possibly can—even (especially) when it feels weird or disorganized, doing my best to be a great friend and family member, trying to mine the value out of every ridiculous situation I may find myself in, and continuing to do the work even though nobody’s watching.

Certainty is a myth anyway. We literally never know what’s going to happen in the next moment, and when I’m not terrified by that, I find it fucking magical.

Gilda was right. Ambiguity is actually delicious.

Through it all I learned some of the biggest lessons of my life, which is to say I learned to embody them. It was a big year for integration and alchemy, for turning poison into medicine, and looking cute while doing it. So here are the main lessons I learned in 2025. I hope they spark a revelation or help you reflect on yours! Please feel free to share them in the comments (do people do that??)

1. Energy is a precious resource. Who and what we give it to matters. In the beginning of the year, I noticed that any time I forced myself into a situation that I knew would be draining but went along with it out of a sense of duty or obligation, I got sick. Four different times in eight weeks. I am very fortunate with my health, so I knew my body was trying to send me a message. This time it was, “Bro, can you maybe be a bit more discerning with how and when and to whom you show up? Because this shit is expensive.” It was not easy. I had to release some relationships with people I love and respect, and say no to things without an excuse or over-explanation (which is a thing we need to normalize anyway.) But what I found was that the things I did say yes to and the people I did continue to show up for gave me more energy rather than sap it.

2. Words have way more power than we think. This year I chose the word ‘sovereignty’ as my word of the year. And let me tell you- it has been a consistent theme in my life right up until the last second. I have been faced with the choice between self and other time and time again, and every time I have chosen myself it’s felt like a massive up level. But there have been moments where I’m like… seriously? This choice again? Can’t the last time have been enough? The Universe likes to teach through repetition and strength training. And that shit works. Please be conscious of every single word you use. Gentle self-editing for using only those words that you want to color your life is essential. When I look back at the goals and intentions I set for this year, each of them has been expressed to the letter. Some of them I didn’t choose as carefully as I might have, and it shows.

3. Love really is all around us. It isn’t rare. We don’t need to go searching for one special person to give it to us. In the past three years I’ve made a conscious effort to de-centralize romantic relationships from my life, and that’s created space for so many other dynamic relationships to come in. I have a vast and diverse community of people who genuinely love and support me and whom I genuinely love and support, which didn’t happen overnight and took effort to gain, but it was so worth it. As it happens, I’ve also had some profound romantic experiences this year, but not in the intense, fuck-my-whole-life-up type of way. It’s been more lived-in and nuanced… just a little sparkle in the background of my life. Love is available to us all of the time, and it’s more than enough to share. Which brings me to…

4. Receiving without guilt, and giving without self-abandonment. I don’t know exactly why, but I have always been a magnet for generosity. However, I felt so awful about receiving that anything given to me seemed to disappear almost instantly. Like I would literally lose shit or have gifts or money stolen from me. Or sometimes I’d even just give it away carelessly because it felt so uncomfortable to hold, like I didn’t deserve it. Not just tangible things… even when I was offered support or love I often denied it. But this year I had a reframe… there’s no such thing as “generosity.” We are all just sharing with each other. When life operates correctly, everyone is giving and receiving in equal measure, never hoarding nor hemorrhaging resources. This year I’ve learned what reciprocity feels like in my body, and so I know when it’s safe to accept gifts (which could be money, energy, acts of service, compliments, etc.) and when to respectfully decline. I can sense when someone’s generosity is tinged with their own sense of lack, and I move away. But more often than not, the resources shared with me are given freely, and whenever I give, I do so with the knowledge that it will only increase what I have. This doesn’t happen when you give only to get, which you have to watch out for because it can be sneaky. I practiced conserving my resources for a long time before I could give in a way that felt clean, and then I noticed that whatever I gave would return to me in some other form, from some other source, always with interest. It’s wild.

5. No more settling for crumbs. This has unequivocally been the greatest and most consistent mistake of my life, and this year I got very fucking serious about not doing that anymore. And so I was tested in some really big ways. There’s a script I’ve had on the market for the better part of this year, and a few months ago I was approached by some producers interested in optioning it. They expected (and somewhat rightfully so) that because I don’t have a credit to my name, they could get a good deal. And that good deal for them was very bad for me in my estimation. Plus they wanted to kick my creative producer out, who has been championing that script the whole time. So I said, “Thank you, next.” Of course there was part of me that wondered who the hell I thought I was, because this was the first time I’ve been approached in that way. But ultimately I will never again devalue myself, my creative babies, or the people in my corner. Because I turned it down, the script stayed on the market and made its way to the hands of a few amazing women at one of the most prominent companies in the industry. Now I have relationships with people that see the value in my writing and are excited to find opportunities to work with me. This is what happens when we stand with our worth. This from a girl who spent years writing for no money, no credit, no acknowledgment whatsoever. I’m here to tell you that by accepting the bare minimum in any area of your life, nobody wins. And we all came here to win.

Happy 2026! Fckn VAMOS!

It was a different experience reading the script this time, knowing that Rob met his wife Michele on set—she was the set photographer— and it caused him to change the ending from a parting of ways to a happily ever after.

That had to be a really powerful, instantaneous connection. It was art imitating life in real time. A true love story within a true love story. And it was the first thing I thought of when I heard the news.

There’s a really cute device in When Harry Met Sally that happens at the start of each “chapter” of their relationship, where an elderly couple talks about the way they came together. In the script, there’s a note that says the conversations written are meant to be placeholders for the real thing- they would find actual couples to tell their stories for the movie. It makes me wonder if they incorporated that idea after Rob met Michele. It seems so, since the culmination of that thread is Harry and Sally talking about how they first met. And it’s this thread that keeps us engaged with the idea of the inevitability of love finding its way.

Although I’ve (mostly) let go of the notion that there is only one person for each of us, I still really enjoy how true it seems when two people meet and instantly know that the person standing in front of them is someone they would love to love. It’s amazing, really. And maybe it doesn’t work out, but it’s never for nothing. Even if it’s painful. Even if it ends in tragedy. It’s always for something. When it comes to Rob and Michele, what that something was may not be for us to know.

And so I’ll stop trying to make sense of the senseless. What Rob did with movies is create a world where everything makes sense. Even North, an unsung hero with—I’m sorry—perfect casting. I plan to sit my niece and nephews down this weekend and show them that masterpiece. All of his movies have real, satisfying endings. They all wrap up perfectly in a bow the way that life generally refuses to. Or maybe life always wants to wrap itself up in a bow, but chaotic souls externalize their disease and step in the way of perfect symmetry.

It’s a philosophical problem that I don’t have the capacity to work out tonight, so instead I’ll watch a comfort movie, maybe The Princess Bride, and feel appreciation for the people who gave me stories that soothe me when I feel a bit sad or lonely or hopeless. It is, after all, the example I try to follow in my own work and the reason I do it.

If anyone wants to read the script, you can find it here. Also— a moment for Nora Ephron. That absolute queen. Everyone should watch Mixed Nuts this week. I hope you’re one of the many people who’ve never seen it so that you get to experience it for the first time. Let me know what you think but only if you loved it.

In my life, I’ve experienced several types of loss… The death of a parent, the end of an engagement, the complete disintegration of an identity built on shifting foundation… and what I know is that the period that comes after is an inner battle between being pissed off and miserable as a sort of rebellion to life’s way of forcing you to go in a new direction, and the desire to reinvent and find a new level of happiness that was previously inaccessible.

Much therapy in the wake of these major life shakeups focus on forgiveness as an essential pathway to happiness, but in my experience, it’s the other way around. After weeks/months/years of forging our new selves in the dumpster fire that was the ending of our old life, we wake up one day to realize we are under threat of becoming happier than we were in the before times. Maybe we met a new amazing person that feels fated, even though we swore we’d never find another… or a new job opportunity that never would have come through if we’d stayed in the old one… or we realize we could just go out and adopt a dog right this second if we want, because we are no longer obliged to a partner who pretends to be allergic but really just doesn’t like them.

These all signify threshold moments. Part of us wants to resist the new awareness that a big happy life is at our fingertips because it might mean that the shitty thing that happened was somehow in your best interest. Say you were married to someone who you really loved and were happy to spend the rest of your life with, and then you find out they’ve been cheating on you and actually they’re glad you brought this up because they want out, like, yesterday. This is a very shitty thing to have happen to you. You will be very hurt/angry/shocked/confused/sad and for good reason.

Time passes and you move forward. Life is not the same and it still feels like there must have been a glitch in the system that catapulted you into this new unfathomable future, but you decide you’re going to try to make something of it, even if it’s not what you thought you wanted. So you go to therapy, you dive deeper into the things you love, your community, a spiritual practice perhaps. And then you meet someone, completely out of the blue and without searching for them, and it feels like arriving in some destination you’ve never traveled to but instantly feel alive and at home there. Suddenly and without warning you are grateful for everything that happened that led you to this spot. It’s a shocking revelation, and actually maybe the sheer expanse of it is all too much and you really don’t like it and can it please back the fuck off???

Sometimes, the markers of transcending a loss can trigger their own sort of grief and indignation. If our new life turns out to be much better than the previous one- more aligned and expansive- does that mean we owe a debt of gratitude to the person or entity that set us on this new path? Well… yeah. It does actually. And- hear me out- I believe that the more comfortable we become with this realization, the happier we can allow ourselves to become. It will just cost us our indignation and resentment. Is it not worth the price of admission?

This concept is a lot easier to accept in terms of a breakup or a job loss… not so much a terminal illness or death of a loved one. But I think it holds up regardless, and I feel that the more justified our pain, the more profound and unshakable our happiness once we can surrender to it.

When we re-frame past hurts, slights, injuries, and losses as the very cause of our newfound wisdom, expansion, sense of possibility and wonder, we can begin the process of forgiveness in earnest. And beware the pull to keep the wound alive and well, of blocking new love, new life, and fresh experiences as a way to stave off forgiveness. I think that sometimes when people feel stuck, it’s a fear of forgiveness rather than success that keeps them in a holding pattern. If we want happiness, we have to pay the price.

I’m here to tell you that it’s totally worth it. Forgiveness is everything it’s cracked up to be when it is total. It is not a sacrifice. It won’t leave you with less, broken and betrayed. It is a complete denial of your brokenness, and isn’t that the definition of wholeness? There’s no point in forcing it. The way to forgiveness is through the determination to become happy, and that conviction will cause all blocks to surface, as well as the tools to break through them. By this process, happiness and forgiveness are made one. I mean how cute is that? Life, you guys.

Subscribe now

Share

Somehow, we were all shocked. When I called her doctor in LA to tell him that the incompetent losers in her town were prepping for her death, he was like, yeah… that tracks. He said that even if she’d made it another year, she would have wound up needing an oxygen tank, and then it would be a matter of time. I pulled my car over to stare blankly at him even though he couldn’t see me. But I think he could intuit the blankness. He said he opted not to mention that bit because, you know… hope.

When we found out she had cancer, I whisked my mom away from our hometown in Central California to LA, then spent the next few months designing life around her treatment schedule. In all the years I lived in LA, she had only come to visit once. Now I was taking her to my favorite breakfast spot daily (Hi Joan’s, I miss you.) and getting high on weed gummies and watching Oscars screeners in the middle of the day. We were basically 23 and jobless, but somehow had money.

There wasn’t a closet in her room, so I bought her a rolling rack. She watched me put the pieces together and when it was finished she remarked that she had never done anything like that for herself. There had always been a man around to do the manual labor. My mom was a hardcore 90s workaholic bitch who could cut through office politics like a knife and knew how to make herself indispensable. The times I saw her mental health slipping were when she stopped working in order to spend more time being a mom. She was really good at it, but motherhood definitely does not come with the same level of affirmation and the benefits are shit. It felt like she was seeing me differently for the first time. I’d built a whole life in LA, moved myself in and out of several different apartments, collected friends and jobs and knew which was the best Jewish deli (RIP Greenblatt’s). She’d never seen any of that until she got sick. Our weekly calls were typically surface-level, and I’d released myself from the ideal of a close relationship with her. But now, at least, there was a new familiarity. She could see me in what had become my natural habitat, and for the first time got to experience what it was like to be a girl in the city, up with the street sweepers and down with the valet attendants.

And then treatment was over and she went back home. When I saw her in the months that followed, I felt like she left a part of herself in LA. She wasn’t ready to be back home in all her typical roles which she no longer fit, nor would she ever admit that she was incapable of filling them. It was a rare time at home for my parents in that they had no dogs. There had never not been a dog. The fact that they made no move toward filling the dog-shaped void felt odd and worrisome. There was just this section of the pantry with all the old toys and bowls and leashes collecting dust. I know it must have struck her every day the way it did me when I’d come home. And she’d have had to make the decision again and again not to do anything about it, which makes it clear she knew something we didn’t.

The morning after it happened, we all went back to my parents’ house to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives. I was standing in the front yard in a daze when felt something looking at me. I turned my head just in time to see a white wolf run off the property. They live in the country so it’s not super rare to see a coyote or some other dog-like creature, but this was a goddamn white wolf. I went inside to tell everybody what I’d seen, and basically I was told I should get some sleep, which was absolutely fair. Hours later, we were all out on the lawn when the white wolf appeared again. We stepped in front of the kids as she stalked toward us, and when she got a few feet away, she sat down and waited to be pet, panting like she’d been through a lot that day. Hadn’t we all. She looked terrifying and beautiful, regal and playful and mean, just like my mom.

Khaleesi Badgirlriri Melikian spent the next several days lounging by our pool, chewing the outdoor furniture, and escorting us on long walks around the property. She was the perfect distraction, causing my dad enough frustration that he had less energy to focus on his excruciating grief, and giving us all something to fuss over. She was not chipped and Facebook posts in local groups yielded no owners, so for two weeks she was our actual emotional support animal. My dad couldn’t stand the thought of raising a dog without my mom, so we found her a really lovely family who adopted her. She was wild at heart, but looking for somewhere to rest, and I think she ultimately found it.

As the years pass, this day becomes more about celebration than grief. Tonight I will go to a show in London and drink something expensive in her honor. Not that that was her only idea of a great night… she’d have been just as happy singing show tunes in a shitty bar, showing off her ability to pick up a pint of beer with her teeth and down it in one go. Here’s to you, Mother. <3

What a time that was. In early 2019, midway through my 36th year, I was struck by the sudden and inexplicable urge to become pregnant. Any woman who has ever declared that she doesn’t want kids has been met with a smug response by some member of the parentarchy to the tune of, “Just you wait- your switch will flip.” The narrow-eyed warning sat dormant in my brain like a sleeper cell until that moment when I became acutely aware of the blinking neon VACANCY sign over my womb.

And so began a quest to uncover whether my desire to turn my uterus into a short-term rental was the result of a biological time bomb, or the fact that I lacked a sense of purpose that parenthood might conveniently fulfill. I read every book on the subject, watched birthing videos as a type of exposure therapy to see if I would crack, started taking prenatal meds just in case, and began asking myself some difficult questions about whether I was actually happy.

On the outside, my life was beautiful. I was in Hawaii with my boyfriend who was directing a movie that was filming there. The emptiness I felt was not confined to the places within my reproductive system… it was all-encompassing. My dreams of being a writer had been shelved, replaced by the desire to be a good partner and confidante— always available, always contributing, devotion at all cost. My aspirations had never provided me with a sense of security, but the dangling carrot of committed love was one I thought I could grasp. And so I tried endlessly, exhausting myself and fighting against the demands of my soul to use my words.

The fixation with my curious need for procreation consumed me to the point I had no choice but to write about it. I thought that if perhaps I could fictionalize my experience, the truth would come out about my subconscious intentions. At the very least, I thought I should give writing a final shot before switching gears. I knew myself well enough to know that parenthood would be a great excuse for me to abandon my career goals completely, so when my boyfriend went off to work in the wee hours of the morning, I set about creating a character whose plight could mirror my own. Much like child-rearing, it was a labor of love that sometimes became an all-out fight for your life.

Writing makes me face myself and all of my demons… my weaknesses and my addictions, my apathy, my wildness that refuses to be contained like a child waging a war against bedtime even though it is so exhausted from the day. Parenting myself through the writing process was ultimately the answer, of course. Laboring over the story (and my creative life as a whole) became the source of fulfillment and purpose I had been seeking all along.

By the midpoint of the script, my baby fever had vanished, replaced by a desire to create something lovely and loving that might one day take on a life of its own. As we speak, we are in the very early stages of optioning the script. If it were a pregnancy, it would be too soon to talk about, and so I will wait to tell you more. But to know that the impulse that hit me like a wave of morning sickness (I can only imagine) was not for nothing is so satisfying.

It took a few years for me to feel ready to share this script with the world. A pregnant pause. Even though it is highly fictionalized, it’s still deeply personal… it shares my DNA after all. What becomes of it is out of my hands, but it has already served its purpose in my life. I can only hope it does the same for someone else.

It’s worth noting that my sister got pregnant with her third and final child right around the time I was struck by baby fever. Which is weird, but it makes me feel like I got to have my cake and eat it too. And that’s what being a childless aunt is all about.

(Astrology divas are screaming about the cancer new moon and OMG I KNOW. She is so on.)

About a month ago I lowered the dosage of the medication I have taken the last three years for Bipolar 2 disorder, and today was the first day I felt inklings of the way my mind used to work creeping back in. I tried to extend a warmish welcome… “Oh hi, it’s you. Feel free to stay for a while just don’t move in, ok?”

My hope for this experiment is that, armed with the tools I didn’t have (or wasn’t able to use) when it was all too overwhelming, I can create space in my life for the symptoms that may come from time to time. And that maybe by creating the space for them to run their course in a safe way, they won’t consume me. My life looks a lot different than it did pre-diagnosis*, and I have often wondered if my former circumstances were the perfect breeding ground for this gene to become triggered. Maybe it’s just my brain chemistry and it is what it is, but luckily I have access to medication that works really well with minimal side-effects.

I think it’s really common for people to come off their meds when they’re feeling better and then get back on them once they realize that they truly need it. I might wind up being one of those people. In fact I tried this already, back in January (which is a very bad time to come off of mental health medication because you’re already in the collective mini existential crisis that is The New Year) and I only lasted a few weeks. The slightest taste of the old feelings and I was OUT. But it was such a rich time for healing because of that that experience. I was like, wait why is this so impossible for me to sit with? I know that my life is not in need of any major upheaval, so when the dreads speak up it doesn’t have to mean total anarchy.

They make me SO uncomfortable, but that’s because in the before times— beneath their panicky rage-filled cries— there were a lot of truths that were desperate for my attention. Listening to them meant facing the cracks in the foundation of my life, and I was not prepared to rebuild just yet.

Nowadays the mania slips beneath the radar a bit more easily. MY LIFE IS REALLY GREAT! (Yeah, it is.) I LOVE EVERYONE SO MUCH (because I do). THE WORLD IS IMPROVING! (Positive affs are always permitted). ADD TO CART! (Mmm ok but maybe sleep on it? Oh you already bought it. Ok.) It’s just this side of too much (or so I like to think…?) and it has some truths to share as well. My life really is great… I feel that I am in a personal golden age. I really love everyone in my life so much. Not a bad seed in the bunch. And I do believe the world is improving in spite of everything, because we are all here and so are all the dogs and cats and pretty things and places and there’s still lots of grass and musical theatre to touch. And we are all really, really trying. Also I was being cheeky I don’t really add to cart. I shop at dirty flea markets and environmentally unfriendly designer shops, or else not at all. Which is the retail equivalent of Bipolar 2.

I like to explore both the inner and outer worlds but I refuse to be reckless about it, which is a way I learned how to be only recently. Today I found myself in some unpleasant territory, but I spent years exploring every jagged edge of its topography, and so I knew my way around. I had found my way out before and knew I would be able to do it again. The main thing when you’re lost or stuck is not to panic, and then you just be patient and don’t give up. I know I’ll make it to the other side.

And that’s exactly where I find myself: on the other side in this lukewarm, too-small bathtub. From here I can see that yes, there is some tidying up to do in my life. I still have places where the growth has been stunted from not receiving enough light. And honestly, that’s ok. When the dreads speak they speak all at once, talking over each other and yelling so loud as they fight for my attention. They all want their thing handled first. And some of them I’m not ready for yet. Others just need to be prayed and chanted about rather than strategized over. Then when it’s time, I can take action from a place of (mostly) calm.

For now, I will strap this sense of home to my back like a little crab so I can carry it with me wherever I go.

*they don’t like, test you for it. It’s kind of just a questionnaire.

This is going to not be my best work… I just really need to put something out in the world today because I am ass deep into a script that’s been a constant in my life for about three months, and I don’t even feel like I’m anywhere near a full first draft. I have about a million unfinished essays littering my desktop and there have been so many wild things happening in my life lately that I want to paint you a picture of, but right now I can’t because I am bound and determined to pour everything I have into this script. I am stating this for the record because if (when. WHEN.) it comes to fruition, I want it known that I made the impossible possible.

IT. FEELS. IMPOSSIBLE. This is a story taken from my own life and it’s somehow more challenging than the last thing I wrote, which was a story taken from someone else’s life. I didn’t have to go on that spiritual journey in order to write about it. I just had to re-imagine it. This is such a confronting process… having to pin down why an experience affected you the way it did and then recreate it with total empathy and honesty and more flair is really something.

I write to find answers to my own questions. I’ve spent the past year exploring the definition of soulmates and how different people relate to seemingly fated relationships. It has been a journey to the depths of my life and and back, like, every single day. It’s the most personal thing I’ve ever written about… a window into my real life discovery that I am my own Twin Flame.

Oh GOD I want to change that last sentence but I’m not going to. I said what I said.

But perhaps the most important takeaway thus far is that when I’m avoiding writing, I’m actually avoiding feeling. Writing makes me feel so much that it’s hard to understand how it fits into my day. Like I need to do my taxes but how? I’m trying to capture the ESSENCE OF LIFE ok?!!! The only receipts I keep are emotional ones. And those, I hope, will someday pay the bills.

Thanks for letting me vent. Here’s a picture of me and the gals after Anora and I won the Academy Awards.

Leave a comment

Though she lacked the capacity to free me from my self-inflicted existential pressure (that turned out to be an inside job ugh), she did have something to share about time that helped… a sentiment I’ve also been noticing from the astrology community, which is that the Gregorian calendar is so out. The stars, the planets, the tides, the seasons, women’s bodies… All cyclical. Less about time than movement.

And yet, here we are… The first month of a fresh new calendar year, which someone- maybe Greg- decided should be in the dead of winter. I’ve been reading lots of thought-provoking assertions about how intentions, resolutions, goal-setting etc. is wasted on January because it is a time for dormancy. And listen, I have been doing all of those things for the past week and I feel like I need a vacation and a silent retreat to recover from it, but I still find value in doing it and doing it now. I think even the plants are starting to dream up who they will be come spring.

This time last year I was voracious for the new life I hadn’t yet built. I had just settled into my aloneness and the home that was all mine, and I was so excited that I felt like I could explode into a cloud of fairy dust at any moment. I was a human disco ball, spinning around and sparkling even when nobody was there to witness it. As the new year approached, everyone was choosing their word for 2024. This was the first time I’d heard about this custom and it piqued my interest (v on brand I know).

A word of the year is meant to be more than an intention. It’s a also compass. And a torch. Words are symbols and symbols are important. Perhaps not the most important- the most important is actual truth- but in this brutally physical world, they matter. Which is why I’m changing the title of this Substack.

The name, “Haley’s Version” suited it in the beginning. Obviously a nod to Taylor Swift’s re-recording of her own music in order to subvert the efforts of a man with a little boy’s name using her art for his personal gain. I know a tiny bit about what this feels like. And I also spent years biting my tongue, keeping my stories, thoughts, and opinions to myself, which may be fine if your soul is not a writer. But mine is, and frankly I have tried to fix it but nothing even seems to take for very long.

The new title is “Seeking Spirit,” because that’s what I am and what I do. I seek and find and seek and find and seek and find and will continue doing so probably forever and then some, because discovery is just so decadent. To have a seeking spirit is to never ever be bored or listless. It represents the pursuit of exploration and knowledge, and most of all, experience. That’s that me.

I’ve kept my spiritual journey mostly to myself, even though it is by far the craziest trip I have ever been on. But revelations are difficult to put into words because they are heavily experiential, and yet often quite subtle. They are typically so profound that they defy the act of assigning words— symbols— to dilute their meaning. Unless you’re like, really really good at it. This is my practice.

Yes, great awakenings can happen on heroic quests and silent retreats and plant medicine journeys, but they also happen in the kitchen and the shower and sitting at a red light. They are always there, waiting to be stumbled upon. And so I search for them like I used to search for four-leaf clovers. All it takes is a little willingness to plant your ass on the lawn and look.

Words should be chosen carefully, and not from the mind. If you allow it, your word will choose you, and once it does, you may spend much of the year bearing witness to its polar opposite. It is the experience of contrast that brings out the fullness of the intended feeling, like chocolate garnished with sea salt.

In 2024, the moment I made the firm decision and proudly proclaimed EXPANSION as my word of the year, it felt like the very fiber of my being went into a state of intense contraction. The music stopped, the lights turned on at the club, and the fluorescent lighting that was January 2024 showed me in no uncertain terms that in order to expand, I must first contract.

When I thought of expansion, I imagined my life bursting at the seams, unleashing my unbridled enthusiasm on an unsuspecting world. But in reality it was waiting, breathing, feeling, and just being. There were glimmers of my Big New Life, but most of the breakthroughs happened quietly, and were difficult to put into words. Not exactly the coming out party I’d envisioned. But by the last quarter of the year, my life started to open up naturally, to the point that I made more authentic friendships than I had in the past several years combined.

It took contraction to create the foundation from which to expand. We do love a plot twist.

My chosen word for this year started bursting into my awareness in early December, which is weird because I have never had any real feelings about this word, and now I want to eat it. It is sovereign. The definition that most resonates is: “Independent of outside authority.” It reminds me of the original meaning of the word 'virgin’, which is a woman who belongs only to herself.

I chose my word, and then I got very sick. I immediately became dependent on outside forces to help me heal— the Urgent Care that was too full to take me on New Year’s Day… the antibiotics that showed up in my body to fight like first responders… the blessed Instacart shoppers… the friends who gave all the fucks and free reiki sessions.

So yeah. I began my year humbled by my dependence on the world around me, and also feeling supported by it. I know it’s leading me down the path to my own true sovereignty, where my inner Authority presides. After many years of seeking outside of myself for direction, I turn inwards and listen.

So I HAVE to ask… What’s yours?

Leave a comment

P.S. I started writing this essay in the days before the fires took hold of Los Angeles, back when we were all still focused on intentions for the year ahead. Nothing chains you to the present like a disaster, especially this close to home. I held this post back because there were no words for what was still happening in real time, but one that seems obvious now is resilience.

SO much kindness and compassion happening in a city that has been branded as totally shallow for its whole life but, like Elle Woods and Cher Horowitz, it refuses to be type-cast. IlyLA <3

I am grateful for the fact that my own parents were not the type to use outside forces to gain my sister’s or my compliance. They were both really great at being terrifying in their own right when they wanted to be, thanks to not learning how to fully regulate their emotions. And so we were never made to feel like Jesus’ death was in any way related to our poor behavior, nor were the starving Chinese children affected in the slightest by our wanting less food than was presently available.

I did however grow up in a pocket of California that loves its intense Christian signage. I recently drove past a local church where a little girl was helping an older woman replace the letters on a sign from Autumn’s ominous “Are you part of God’s harvest?” to winter’s “Give the greatest gift, tell them about Jesus.” It made me wonder what this little girl might tell someone about Jesus and if it would include the part about him dying for our sins, as my school friends would rattle off at me after a spring break spent at church camp almost kissing somebody who would turn out to be very gay.

I have always been spiritually curious and open, so I took everything that was reported to me by kids brought up in religious households into consideration, and even prayed about it. I wouldn’t have called it prayer at the time… It was more like voice-noting the sky. I got a lot of insight that way, and could perceive when things were a little misunderstood by my informants, but the whole thing about Jesus dying FOR OUR SINS just never made any sense to me no matter how I sliced it.

Then I grew up and became a Nichiren Buddhist and now, at Christmas, in the year of our Lord 2024, I can say that I finally, FINALLY, finally, kind of get it. No, I do. I think.

In Buddhism, there is a concept referred to in the Lotus Sutra (the Buddha’s ultimate teaching) as “voluntarily assuming the appropriate karma.” This is the idea that we can will to take on certain difficult causes and conditions in order to create the greatest opportunity for healing, growth, and evolution for ourselves and others. Many have done it throughout history, but none more famously than one Jesus H. Christ.

In the light of this concept, ‘Jesus suffered and died for our sins’ could be elucidated to mean that: because of his deep compassion, Jesus incarnated into a time and place in which the message he had to share with the world would make the most impact, even though doing so would cause him to be persecuted. And was probably also very difficult and inconvenient and put him in many situations that were decidedly not the vibe. Jesus lived the way he did to shine a light on the root cause of human suffering (which is to say our “sins”), and he died the way he did because he was compassionate enough to do so.

I think that Christmas represents that choice… the one I feel like we’ve all made to be here now and shine our light. This is the celebration of showing up in the world, ready and willing, come what may. I like the idea that we are here because of our deep compassion, knowing it wouldn’t be easy or always entirely pleasant. It takes courage and strength to live in this world, and this day is in praise of showing up anyway because our gifts are too valuable to keep to ourselves.

I learn from every person I encounter on this path and I see so much wisdom and compassion that it shapes my world view into something prismatic and lovely. This was a very intense way to say THANK YOU for being here in this life with me, whether you believe you chose it or not. Happy Christmas!

I had no idea what my life would look like in the coming months, but I knew I needed to be alone to truly face myself and start to heal. And then the Universe was all, “Here’s two hot bois who are absolutely going to fuck you up with their charm and vehement admiration, and then they will scatter like cockroaches terrified of light should you choose to take the bait.” And I was all, “Sounds hectic. Sign me up!”

I spent the next several months asking myself how I wound up with two heartbreaks and barely even one couch within my first month of being single in nearly a decade. Why was I so willing to sacrifice myself for the sake of cotton candy love- the kind that disintegrates the second it touches your lips and causes you to crash after getting you all high?

In the midst of searching for my answer to that very loaded question, I was invited to join my work wife, Gabrielle Stone, on a trip to Mexico on almost exactly the same dates that I was there the previous year, which struck me as synchronistic, and I am a total hoe for synchronicity. She and I have worked together since April 2023, a defining moment in my career and life. The trip was put on by a company called Trova that organizes travel experiences for influencers and their fans. I have never responded to a text faster than that one. 

A few months later, I arrived at LAX to meet Gabrielle. Gab and I haven’t spent much time together in real life- just a few meals and meetings- but nothing too significant. I wondered if our creative compatibility would extend to travel, but any anxiety I had disappeared before we even made it through security. Everything was just easy. We wanted coffee at the same time. We staggered our visits to the bathroom so someone was always watching the luggage. I left my phone at the currency exchange and she didn’t even judge me.

In a past life, my job in the music industry frequently put me in the position of middleman between artist and their fans. Often times I found myself trying to compensate for the level of detachment my artist displayed towards the fans who were literally funding their dreams. Getting to know the fans and doing my best to reward them for their evangelism was by far my favorite part of my job. To the outside world, the payoff in my line of work was getting to hang out with famous musicians, but to be honest that was the most stressful part. The fun was in connecting with the fans. 

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Gabrielle’s relationship to her readers… It’s one thing to be open and engaging online, but quite another in person. But that bitch did not miss a beat. We found Susie waiting for us outside of the Cancun airport. She had arrived earlier from the UK, and Gabrielle offered for her to join our transfer to Tulum. Brilliant decision, it turns out, because Susie is a goddamn delight. Seeing that Gab was so comfortable with Susie and genuinely happy to have her with us let me know that this experience was going to be entirely different from my past. We were all there as equals, and that made me so excited for what was to come.

The first full day, we joined the other 17 women for a welcome dinner, in which everyone went around introducing themselves and giving their experience of why they connected with Gabrielle and the book. I was absolutely floored by the breadth of experience, the candor, the vulnerability, and the humor of these women from all over the country (and a few international hotties) spanning multiple generations, races, and backgrounds. It was a truly out of body experience that made me realize that this story not only belongs to Gabrielle, or to me, but to all of these women and many, many more.

Everyone has experienced and overcome suffering. Everyone knows what it’s like to feel deep grief and loss. And yet, they still have a giant capacity for joy and love. It was clear that the thing these women all had in common was their strength and grace. And their outpouring of warmth towards me- a person they did not pay to spend their vacation with- was truly overwhelming. It was only our first night together, and I was already smitten.

The next day we divided up into groups, half on each shuttle, and we were off for a day of adventure and sight-seeing. First up was zip-lining over the jungle, which I had never done, but the 30 minute ride to the park was so full of lols and insightful conversation that I didn’t have time to think about it. I led the charge to the top of the structure, which as it happens was a lot higher up than it looked. I was shocked to discover that I am a big fat chicken when I had to remove myself from the narrative of breezy bitch who effortlessly floats above the treeline in a foreign country. Nope. I was a shaky chihuahua hiding in the corner. 

One of the great women of my group, Sydney, stayed with me as I grappled with the nature of my own existence, sweating both stress and regular varieties. Just as I was about to give up and make my way back down the structure with my tail between my legs, Gabrielle emerged- shocked to see me. After some not-so-gentle coaching from my blonde counterpart, I stepped up to the platform, took several slow breaths, and hurled myself into the humid air. And then I did it five more times. When it was over, I was met with lots of congratulations and love from all the women who were way more brave than I. And maybe it was the fact that my body had prepared itself for sudden death only a few minutes prior, but I really felt their happiness for me. 

The level of support from total strangers was something I believe all of us were feeling in extremis. As we moved through the Mayan Riviera, testing our lung capacity in cenotes, braving the heat at archeological sites, basking in the warm tourmaline ocean, everyone kept an eye on each other. Lately I’ve seen a lot of shit talk about women’s failure to organize, support each other, or create sisterhood… but there we were, just running around Tulum as a self-sustaining unit, each one there to provide water, a moist towelette, or a joke as needed.

Every event and activity bonded us more closely as a group, and watching individual connections organically evolve was something I didn’t know I needed to see. A “golden thread” as Sandra put it. I started this year wondering whether instantaneous connection could ever be trusted, and I will end it knowing that, fuck yes it can. 

Our second dinner together was slightly more intimate than the first, which is saying something because we all cried that night. But this time, rather than sharing our deepest wounds and biggest hurdles, we revealed our juciest, dirtiest, most unhinged secrets. Never Have I Ever laughed so hard or been so shocked. Absolutely no one held anything back during a round of Two Truths and a Lie- the more innocent I assumed the woman was, the more shocking and ratchet her truths (looking at you M). It was absolutely amazing. I found myself telling secrets that only the very closest people in my life know about me, and I regret nothing. Ok ok maybe I regret some things… but sharing those regrets is not one of them.

Perhaps an even more intimate revelation of mine was when Gab appeared at my side with wild eyes and asked if I wanted to read a scene from something special I had written. I said yes and switched from wine to tequila. Reading lines aloud to the people I had written them for was something I will never ever forget. Nothing, no matter how big the screen or how warm the audience, could ever compete with that room of 18 women giving me their full attention and applause.

We laughed so much. We cried some too. And we DANCED. Our crew rolled into the club and onto the empty dance floor, and people hypnotically followed. The circle we created became the only place to be, and the more we turned up the more people wanted to join in. Watching these women absolutely own their sexiness on that dance floor was one of the coolest things I’ve ever witnessed. Like ok Jenna… go off. You too Amanda.

That same spirit followed us the next day onto a yacht where we were served drinks by a twerking bartender and treated like queens of the Caribbean. At one point I found myself floating alone in the water (an attempt to hide from tequila being poured into all the queens’ mouths) watching everyone on the boat. It was hard to believe we had all only met a few days before. Everyone who knows me knows that I love a costume change. I brought one for every hour we were on the boat, and was cheered each time I emerged from the cabin in a fresh bikini. These, I then knew for sure, were definitely my people.

On our last night, Gabrielle asked everyone to go around and share what they had gained from the trip that they’ll be taking home with them, and what they’d be leaving behind. Once again I was floored by the wide open hearts and beautiful words that each person shared. April cried for the second time in her life. Courtney shared something that made us all cheer with gratitude and relief. Everyone had something jaw-droppingly poignant to say, including our beautiful guide Karolita, and I soaked it all up while being eaten alive by mosquitos. But even they could not touch the vibe.

Thinking about it now, what I left behind was the need for false validation and fleeting connection, and what I took was the sense of solidarity and encouragement I received on this trip. No longer grasping at love, and finally able to receive it, I recall the genuine interest people had in my story, in my words, and my future. They saw me, not what I could give them or how I could make them feel… just me.

I left Mexico on 11/11, the same date as the wedding I went to a year ago, with Gabrielle after a final brunch with our new friends. I realized that this time, the divine connections I made were true and lasting, nothing cotton candy about this love. Whatever healing I did or didn't do this past year, I’m not worried about it anymore. I can say with total certainty that we’re all in this together, and I have twenty women who will back me on that. 

Karla- Thank you for my frog. She is perfect. So are you.

Courtney- I regret not taking the shot. Next time, I promise.

Sandra- Thank you for buying me that coffee!

Valerie- You’re right. I will never be anyone’s prop again.

April- Fuck you

Maya- Shocked and amazed by you. But mostly shocked.

Danyelle- Thank you for teaching me about word count. I am using it now.

Alexis- Karma innit? Bus friends for life.

Cyndi- What if we kissed on a yacht?

Susan- Susan for President 2028.

Cate- More wine soon please.

Portia- You’re a true first class bitch.

Ashley- Southern comfort, not Southern values.

Jenna- No voice? No problem. You made your mark anyway.

Amanda- Mermaid angel princess, thank you for being you.

Jana- You put the QUEEN in drama queen.

Paula- You better have more fingers down the next time I see you.

Sydney- You jump, I jump, remember?

Karolita- We are were so lucky to have your expertise and your energy.

Gabrielle- Where to next?

I love you all. Thank you so much for embracing me. I will carry your words, beautiful energy, and grit with me as I move through the world.

Until next time, pinche vida! Xoxoxoxo

This has most recently become evident by the wild popularity of the Netflix series, Nobody Wants This (created by Hot Blonde Funny Girl Rich Bitch Erin Foster.) The premise is a hot blonde funny girl with a suspiciously fabulous apartment in LA leaves behind the world of shitty dudes and dead-end dating in lieu of an ultra-charming good boi hot Rabbi. It’s an unlikely romance, except that they are equally attractive, somehow both single in their mid-40s with minimal baggage- save the hauntingly beautiful and ethnically unambiguous ex, Rebecca. 

We the audience are absolutely ingratiated by Adam Brody, as we have been since we were teens, watching The OC with our best take on beachy highlights a la Marissa Cooper. The fact that we are now more interested in the grounded-if-a-bit-neurotic Seths of the world than the broodingly complex Ryans is further evidence of our nascent healing. But to say that the relationship between Kristen Bell’s Joanne and Adam’s Noah is the gold standard of a budding healthy relationship is dead ass wrong you guys. This is just a new kind of fairytale, one in which Prince Charming is less avoidant and more of a sexy feminist hero. 

Halfway through the pilot episode I started texting my friends to tell them to watch. One by one the responses came in; they had already watched it and hadn’t mentioned it to me because they thought it would be triggering. I laughed it off, how sweet of my friends to think I’m that sensitive. It wasn’t until about 5 episodes in that I knew what they were talking about. And they were right.

Here’s the thing… I am so here for fantasy. Not all entertainment needs to by hyper-realistic and bent on exposing truth and injustice and the rawness of the human experience. Some can just be nice, cute, quippy, sweet, and understatedly sexy. This is actually so much the way I write that I plan to follow a bunch of the writers on IG because I think we should be friends. They absolutely nailed the assignment and I begrudge them nothing. However, for me, this show is anything but fantasy. I lived it yawl, and lemme tell you how it ends:

{spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t finished the series, although if you’ve watched one ep you’ve probably watched them all because as previously mentioned, it IS fun/cute/sexy/etc.}

Noah comes after his tiny Shiksa goddess, with her rebellious spirit and her vulnerable confidence- the bane of his mother’s existence- casting aside his aspirations of becoming Head Rabbi at a prominent Synagogue. This, I promise you, is the beginning of his resentment towards her, as well as his frustration that even if she were willing to comply with the expectations and responsibilities of his status, it would never be without strain. And that strain will grate on everyone. 

What is yet to be explored by the show is the fact that, whether Noah is made Head Rabbi or not, the cultural implications of being seen as an “outsider” to his family and wider community gets very fucking old, not just to the outsider herself, but to those who will hold her flaws and her otherness against her no matter how hard she tries to show them that she is worthy of their love and respect.

Noah’s role in his family is what it is. He’s not a kid. The time to dissent from his family’s (namely his mother’s) expectations of him has long passed and he will spend his life compartmentalizing his family and his partnership, and begging both sides to try harder. The Shiksa is out-numbered and naturally wants the approval of the matriarch, and so she will either: A. try to be everything the matriarch wants her to be and pull out every trick in her spiritual toolbox to forgive and forget the wildly abrasive comments or B. Defend herself, rebel, and bite back in conspicuous and passive-aggressive ways.

These poles were written expertly in Episode 9, where Joanne brings a beautiful gift to meet Noah’s parents, but it was the wrong gift, so she tries harder and eventually there is a fallout. Then she catches Noah’s mom enjoying her gift (a charcuterie board… kind of on the nose if you ask me but…) and so uses it as blackmail and a means of exerting power over her. On TV, power struggles are juicy fun. IRL, they are goddamn exhausting.

If it isn’t abundantly clear by now, this is my story. I was in deep, devoted, committed love with a nice Jewish boy for eight years who swept into my life and caused me to give up my semi-chaotic ways. I literally met him at a bar called The Nice Guy. The line that everyone seems to be hanging on from this series is when Noah tells Joanne, after she displays pretty mild symptoms of her crazy, that he can handle her. You guys. Do you know how many times my person said this to me when I was being proper crazy? And you know what? It made me feel so much better because I had such bad shame that I was being so imperfect. But it also sort of just… reinforced the fact of it. Finally someone could *handle* me. If this isn’t a savior complex, I don’t know what is.

It’s common knowledge that when you marry someone, you also marry their family, but this was especially true of his family. They are a prominent and well respected, tight knit Jewish family whom I loved and wanted to be a part of very much. While they were generally kind and generous, there was an undercurrent of mistrust and mild but apparent animosity that I couldn’t quite comprehend. I chalked a lot of it up to generational trauma and also the fact of one of them being a world-famous celebrity, and so it made sense that they would be mindful of who they let in. Grandma J was the absolute best- a bright spot and my Scrabble buddy. Uncle A was testy but lovable. Aunt V was unpredictable and cagey but is the only one who still texts me. Cousin J was batshit crazy, albeit in a non-menacing way. But it was my never-to-be MIL that really took the piss.

I remember nearly every single horrid comment she threw at me over the course of the eight years I tried, sometimes desperately, to win her love and approval. In one episode, Joanne says re Noah’s community’s disapproval of her: “I am widely liked. This is literally the worst problem I’ve ever had.” Ok yes. It’s very weird to be outwardly disliked, especially if you have a long history of being a very successful people pleaser and an affable personality. Some might even call me a delight, but who’s counting.

Much like the matriarch in the show, I think mine actually did like me, in spite of herself. And that was the saddest part. She didn’t want to let herself love me because I didn’t fit the mold and she couldn’t move past that. Every comment stung because deep down, I knew it really mattered to my partner that she love me, and she flatly refused. 

My former fiancé told me that he had gotten a girlfriend several months after we ended it and that his mother was incredibly warm to her… they got along so well that it freaked him out and he broke it off. Lots to unpack here. Firstly, Mother seems to have learned that being a dick to her son’s partner for the better part of a decade can in fact have its ramifications. Secondly, he loved the very thing about me that he ultimately could not accept: that I was never going to be what he (and they) needed me to be.

I was never going to fully observe the rules of engagement with his family because I found them incredibly constrictive and inauthentic to who I was. Hell, for a few years I had a fake job that was meant to cover the fact that I was unemployed so they wouldn’t think I was a freeloading opportunist. I even gave myself a couple promotions. My company experienced a merger that was difficult to navigate. I asked my MIL for advice about how to ask for a raise. Ok, that was probably a hair too far, and anyway it didn’t work. I think she thought me weak for needing to ask her.

For the record, I was unemployed so that I could devote myself to helping him build his career and be available to travel whenever his job required, which was frequently and for long stretches of time. But this would not have been satisfactory to them, even though I had a hand in nearly every decision he made and gave him MANY of my words, which contributed to his success in pretty glaring ways. This made me think of how Joanne’s life would play out, attending every service and seder by his side. She’ll have her own thing going, sure… but can anything really be more important than his job? I avoided visiting his sets because I couldn’t stand being thought of as the Director’s Fiancé, rather than a full on human in my own right. Not to mention the fact that many of the actors would be performing my words without having any idea. That was hard. I chose it, but it was hard.

However, all this aside, that man loved me and I loved him. And I felt lucky and chosen and not too much. We knew we were very different and we decided not to care and instead to try and embrace it. But the truth was that his roots went very deep and his familial ties were incredibly strong. The unspoken agreements that had been put in place long before he was born were not so easily set aside, even when they were in opposition to what I wanted to build with him as our own sovereign unit. We would never be our own sovereign unit. Even the subject of our wedding was dismissed time and time again because he felt so conflicted about how to handle the true merging of our worlds- of his worlds. It was a huge blow to my faith in our unity that ultimately caused us to separate.

The most heartbreaking moment in the show for me came in its final episode. Joanne follows Noah’s ex Rebecca out of his niece’s Bat Mitzvah for what seems like entirely selfish reasons, and after some mostly cordial back-and-forths, Rebecca says, “You’re going to live my dream […]. You win. I hope you enjoy it.” In that moment, I not only saw myself as the Shiksa who has made it her business to be the hottest, most fun one at the Bat, but also the one that came before her. The failure. Rebecca is of course not a failure… she will go on to find someone who actually does want to try with her and doesn’t hoard her love and her youth with the promise of forever rotting in a box in his dresser. But in this moment, she concedes that it will not only not be with the man she loves and has put so much time, hope, and energy into… but that he will move on with someone new who will benefit from her efforts and dedication to his path.

Ok ok I’m landing the plane. What rings most true is that these characters are in love. But love isn’t ever enough is it? I can name lots of other plot points that spell disaster for this relationship if it were IRL, but why spoil the fantasy? Would any of us actually be mad if our knight in shining facial hair crashed a big important meeting to perform a religious ceremony and ask us to be their girlfriend? Yeah, we would because that is pretty not ok. But watching it happen on screen? Let’s fucking go girls.

When it comes to actual healthy on-screen relationships, we still have some seeking to do… But a hallmark of non-healthy relationships is drama, and like many genres of porn, sometimes it’s better left to the professionals rather than trying to re-enact it yourself in the real world.

The final scene follows Joanne as she boards the shuttle bus to take her away from the Bat Mitzvah where she’s just told her beloved Rabbi goodbye, rather than making him choose between her and his dreams. She asks him not to come after her, because it would only make it harder, which is fair. In the end, he doesn’t listen and beats her to her car where he sweeps her into a kiss and a delusion all at once. I think there could have been a stronger ending, and so I’ve gone ahead and written it.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

It’s not about blind faith or a subconscious desire to give up responsibility for my life to the cosmos. Personal experience has, time and time again, delivered evidence of its influence on my life. I think it’s like most elements of the collective consciousness that just sort of exists as an undercurrent.

I also just really like the idea that the planets and stars have this calculated function of keeping us moving through our hero’s journey, providing constant opportunities for forward motion, side-quests, and ultimately growth, should we choose to accept the challenges they present. But twice a year there comes an astrological event so undeniably influential to the trajectory of my life that I consider it its own, self-contained hero’s journey- a juicy plot that’s all about fate and destiny and coming-of-agey stuff: the eclipse. Eclipses come in pairs, about two weeks apart, and set the stage for big changes and revelations that seem to always have conspicuous effects.

In October 2022, I paced around the living room of the high-rise condo I inhabited with my then fiancé, trying to plan a trip. We had the means to do just about whatever we wanted, and I remember having a deep desire to push us out of our box, which was strange because it hadn’t occurred to me that we were in a box until then. One minute I was suggesting we charter a boat to take us down the Amazon in search of the pink dolphins, and the next I was proposing that we hire an escort to bang my fiancé in a fancy hotel room while I sipped a cocktail downstairs at the hotel bar just to see what it felt like. I guess I imagined, however subconsciously, that these scenarios would make us uncomfortable and shift the foundation of our relationship in a way that would somehow force us into the reset we so desperately needed. To face ourselves and each other and become new.

We settled on a trip to New York, a place we both loved and had always felt like slightly different, more interesting versions of ourselves. After a few days in Manhattan, we would migrate to Florida where we planned to drive around stopping in all the most desirable cities with the intention of sussing out whether we should buy a house there. The whole thing was being spearheaded by me, another attempt at breaking the golden handcuffs that I felt shackled us to a life not entirely our own. I was willing to live in the same state as Florida Man… The desperation.

We flew in on the date of the first eclipse of the season, October 25, which was likely when I contracted Covid for the first time. The symptoms showed up two days later, as we were boarding a plane to Florida. I covered up as best I could, and by the time we arrived in Miami, separate cars had been booked, as well as an Airbnb two hours north of the city where I’d hole up in an Airbnb for nine days. 

I had never spent that many consecutive days completely alone. I felt terribly lonely, but I also knew that I needed the time to figure out why I was sick. I am blessed with a very strong constitution, and any real illness I’ve ever had tended to coincide with a life crisis of one sort or another. Those days were hard, not because I was sick but because my life was. My relationship was. But I was determined to figure out how to fix it. I sat down with a cheesy journal whose cover mocked me with the phrase “Happy Thoughts” and tried to write out a version of the life I envisioned with him, happy and healthy and moving forward together. But all I could see in my mind’s eye was a blank slate. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t see anything... Just white.

My favorite astrologer wrote in her newsletter, Astro Butterfly, about that eclipse: On October 25th, 2022 we have a Solar Eclipse at 2° Scorpio. This is a South Node eclipse so it’s concerned with karmic, fated new beginnings. South Node Solar Eclipses often come with an ending followed by a new beginning. The Solar Eclipse is exactly conjunct Venus, suggesting a rebirth of the heart that will set us on a completely new path. We can undo things. We can change things. We can have a say. We can consciously co-create with the Universe a life of meaning and purpose. 

I wouldn’t get around to reading this until the night of the following eclipse, which happened to be the day before I tested negative and would rejoin my partner in Miami. Two months later, our relationship was over. I had absolutely no idea or intention of this outcome, and I was goddamn terrified. I wanted to turn it around, but something in me knew this was the path I had to take if I wanted a chance at real happiness. It never would have occurred to me that that would even be possible without him, and I still didn’t believe it. It was like the current of my life was moving in a totally unforeseen direction, and yet I was also aware that I was steering the ship. 

The Universe brought me experiences that would highlight all the things I had been unwilling to face in my life, but it was my choice to make the change. That eclipse season was incredibly dramatic because I had been so afraid to see the truth and leap forward into the unknown for so long. Since then I have gotten much more brave and willing to evolve, so the eclipse seasons have been more exciting and plot twisty than chaotic.

The one we’re experiencing now has been very interesting. I am still seeing themes around relationship dynamics and romantic love come up, which was totally unexpected because I have been consciously single and fully celibate for nearly a year- something I’ve never even entertained before. Finding out who I am in this area of my life now can’t be avoided, even it wasn’t part of the plan. Especially that it wasn’t part of the plan.

For the past few years, I’ve been practicing Nichiren Buddhism, chanting the phrase Nam Myoho Renge Kyo morning and evening, and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that now I feel the themes of astrology in a more potent way than ever before. I feel like whenever we engage with our lives from a place of really wanting to get in sync with the Universe and whatever our highest path brings, even if it’s fucking uncomfortable, everything begins to shift. The more we lean into it, the less jarring it is when something you didn’t see coming shows up and completely rocks your world. Idk about you but I am here for all of it.

If you’re interested in what some actual astrologers have to say about the eclipse season we are currently experiencing, here are a few of my fave resources:

Astro Butterfly

Moon Omens

Otherworldly

Happy eclipsing!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

I want to be worshipped the way that she is... I want to be marveled at and wondered about at night... I want my cycles to be honored... I want my fullness to be celebrated and for everyone to bask in my glow... I want my mystical powers to be acknowledged and revered... I want everything she has…

And she doesn’t think about me at all. 

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share Haley’s Version

I am a person who becomes obsessed by images plus emotions, which is basically what movies are and the best excuse I have for my desire to write them. Whenever something happens to me that leaves a mark (lived or anticipated), I find that I can only fully integrate it into my being by distilling or embellishing it with language. If I don’t, the energy gets suspended and makes me feel anxious and exhausted. 

There were so many years that I denied this impulse, and those happen to be the years that I became totally depressed and self-harmy. During that time I’d try anything I could think of to allay the suffering— drugs (wine and weed), sex (codependent relationships), rock and roll (Taylor Swift and 50s girl groups)— none of it worked. I used physical pain to feel what I could not name, and numbness to keep me from trying. I kept a journal throughout, as I’ve done since I was five, but most of the entries are sort of abstract and prayer-like — the one form of communication that has no use for words.

I have a tough time in a world that insists on not being a musical. I don’t like it. Why can’t we dance through the aisles of the grocery store and perform overshare soliloquies and write love letters and cry in public without it being unforgivably corny? Some of us live in New York and LA and have trained our whole lives to be good at drama and then just walk around being not dramatic. Maturity is for the repressed, I say! 

Ok but I know that dialing it back and checking yourself and not causing a scene are dignified, wisdom-fueled acts of service that will keep you from being uninvited to every party and kicked out the group chat. And that there is plenty to be gained by the denial of emotional gratification, but the impulse still has to go somewhere. 

Anyway, this is why I write. It might be why you paint or sing or do photography or improv (god forbid). It’s about telling impulse control to fuck off for a bit and creating a lithograph of who you are and how you feel in this moment. And when reality falls flat of your wishes, you can literally just write a new script. 

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

I really hated to miss this wedding, because the bride and I not only saw each other through grade school and high school, but also college. She went into the world and figured out what was good, and then I followed. I would never have considered moving to Santa Barbara after high school if she hadn’t made it seem so fashionable. And it really, really was. I moved there the same week that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston broke up. There were paparazzi photos of them walking solemnly down Butterfly Beach, where only six months later I’d sit reading The Devil Wears Prada when it was still just a book, while wearing my first ever Brazilian bikini. Not a drop of sunscreen on my face. It was peak 2005.

When she left to study abroad in Spain, I joined her for what would be my first taste of Europe. We found each other in the Madrid airport without cellphones. We took a very hungover bus ride to Segovia, a perfect little town where the castle lives that inspired the one from Sleeping Beauty. It was cold and rainy and I was in flip flops, the kind that are like a wedge? Everyone seemed mad at me and I knew that was why. But it was 2006 and we didn't have the ability to see what other cooler, cuter people were wearing on their trip to Spain, so I just thought everybody in the free world dressed like they were off to house party hop in a lawless beach town filled exclusively with hot baby adults.

I was used to Rachel doing big life things first, and then tagging along and seeing what the fuss was all about. And then eventually along would come my little sister to reap all the benefits of our discoveries. But not this time. Now, Rachel was getting married, and Shelley was having a baby, and I was using the money I made renting out my apartment on Airbnb to live. 

A full eight hours had passed since my sister went into the hospital. Since she knew absolutely nothing about how birthing works, she assured me there was no way she’d be having any kind of baby within the next 24 hours, so I should just go to the wedding. And since I knew even less than she did, I got in the car and made the three hour drive from Fresno to Monterey. 

I parked just off Cannery Row, a street that was once the place to be if you were a sardine or Steinbeck, and is now the place to be if you are a kid with a fairly common name in want of a keychain even though you don’t actually have any keys. I changed into my second-hand Dolce and Gabbana dress in my car (who could afford a hotel room and a designer dress?) and waltzed into the hotel where the wedding was being held.

I didn’t enjoy myself. I felt completely lost among a sea of blonde former Gauchos with shiny new husbands and degrees in business or marketing. Some of the girls whom I’d once designed outfits for out of household materials- tin foil, wrapping paper, lamp shades- for an ‘anything but clothes’ party were fucking doctors now. I was fresh out of my cool job in the music industry and still leaning on it for some semblance of importance, which had the opposite effect. In fact it made me feel so so small. I didn’t want to care, but at 28, what you were becoming in the world seemed infinitely more important than who you were becoming. And I wasn’t sure of anything.

So I did what absolutely anyone would do: I got very drunk and wound up in someone’s hotel room with three other people, only one of whom I was interested in hooking up with. Unfortunately she was more into one of the two guys present. For the record, I am very straight, which speaks to how criminally uninteresting the men in that room were. I took bottled water from the mini bar and a pillow off the bed and slipped out before anyone could make a daring suggestion.

I woke up in my car to several missed calls from my mother. My sister had been induced, but it wasn’t working, so they were going to schedule her for a C-section. I filled myself with enough caffeine to kill a small horse, and made it to the hospital just in time to receive the news that the baby had been born, but my sister was taken to the ICU because they couldn’t stop the bleeding. A more sobering moment I had never lived.  All this happened while I was tucked in my little car like a sardine?? Someone told us that the baby was going to be ok, expecting that to be a salve for our imminent panic. They made it sound as though only one of them would live, so at least it would be him.

Thanks to the miracle of modern science, prayer, bargaining with God, threatening the doctor, or all of the above, within a few hours I was holding my new nephew while my sleepy sister asked me about the wedding. I told her it was nice. The bride looked stunning. The groom is great but his friends are boring (No offense G but… do better.) She listened with the part of her brain that would always be reserved for tea, but mostly she was focused on the tiniest movements of the alien in the room. I clocked this, knowing that it was the beginning of a new life. Mine. His. Hers.

My world was still just as big of a mess as it had been the day before, but now all I could think about is how close I came to losing my sister, and how much she had endured to bring this angry little being into the world. At a time in my life when I needed to learn how to re-parent myself, I was witnessing what it looked like when someone made the transition from person to parent in the blink of an eye.

Since then, I’ve become an aunt to two more people, and formed bonds with the children my friends have brought to life. I recently got to meet one of my best friend’s babies on his one week birthday. I sat in bed with her, listening to her harrowing tale of how it all went down when her husband quietly entered the room and handed off the baby. He said he would really like to hang out and catch up with me but that he was going to take advantage of my presence and go run some errands, and off he went.

I’ve heard that gay penguins will occasionally step in to watch over their straight friends’ eggs and help raise their chicks. They’re also probably really fun to hang out with and have the energy for feigning astonishment that the parents can’t possibly sustain. This is so Auntie culture. We pop in, we hang out, we stand guard while you return the Amazon packages. We don’t complain when you’re late or tired or can only focus on one thing at a time. It’s cool. We’re cool.

A few days ago I got a call from my nephew, now a fully formed 11 year old, to tell me he’d just won his first football game. He’d begged his parents to join a league that will have them driving all around central California for the next few months. My sister tried to reason with him, pointing out that she would have to bend the laws of time and space to get him to and from the far away games. He responded flatly, “Auntie will take me.” It’s like he knows I rose from the dead to be there for his emergence into the world and so what’s a 90 mile roundtrip drive on a Saturday morning?

He’s right though, because one of the perks of living by my own rules is that I am free to give myself over to this role that I fell backwards into. As the eldest daughter, my maternal instinct has always been active and had a place to land, which is probably why I’ve not had a persistent desire to produce children of my own. When I was younger, I worried that this might separate me not only from potential partners, but friends who, seemingly overnight, became someone’s primary caregiver. Now I know that the opposite is true.  

My life has been anything but conventional, and at times it’s been willfully chaotic. There are some nights spent alone where I wonder if I have taken too many wrong turns and as a result, wound up somewhere I wasn’t meant to be. But then a text comes in from my sister informing me that my 9 year old niece wants to come stay at my house on Friday night. Just her. No siblings. No friends. No pets. Of her own volition and for her own volition. She wanders around my house, examining the walls and the furniture, eyes wide.

HER: Living alone is cool…
ME: Yeah, it is.
HER: You can do whatever you want!!!

Yes. You can do whatever you want. My job here is done.

Last year I was hired to write a show based on a book. Writing the pilot was a challenging process, mainly because I had to confront tidal waves of self-doubt and inertia, but I did it and I was very pleased with the finished product. It was fun, funny, cute, intense, sexy, girly… all the best adjectives were present and accounted for.

A few weeks later, as I was basking in the afterglow of a job well done, I learned that the script had been passed around to the producers and everybody just loved it… but. Could I rewrite it from another angle and change the structure completely? I said yes of course, because I am a goddamn professional, and then set about booking a flight to Greece so I could hurl myself off the balcony overlooking the Aegean that I’d written my favorite scene from. 

I spent the following week wandering around my house in stunned silence, punctuated by occasional weeping and fits of rage. I could not fathom a world in which another version of the story existed and anyone who did must be high. I didn’t want anything to do with that world. I wanted the world to remain as I’d created it.

We are so committed to our current story, all the plans we’ve made and details we fuss over and the future we get excited about, that we tend to close ourselves off to the possibility that we may have written ourselves into a corner. That there might be an even better way forward. I still experience bursts of grief and disorientation from the rewriting of my life almost two years ago. The story wasn’t working anymore. The structure was flawed. I had to kill my darling and it hurt like fiery hell.

Eventually, I rewrote the pilot episode and liked it better. And then I rewrote it again. And when the thing gets picked up, I will probably rewrite it again. And while I will likely need to hide in a closet and cry about it for a few hours, I’ll emerge with the conviction that with every rewrite comes an opportunity to exceed my own limitations.

This is all part of the process. We let go, grieve the loss of what we wanted so badly to work, and begin again. We let go, grieve the loss of what we wanted so badly to work, and begin again and again and again. After all, you can’t have a great rewrite without a first (second, third, fourth, eleventh) draft. 

In my life I’ve been camping exactly twice: once during a short stint in the Girl Scouts about 15 miles from home (which I considered walking back in the middle of the night, as my peers slept peacefully) and again 30 years later, just last week. The only exception is a handful of nights speckled throughout my adult life that I spent in my car, typically on a pilgrimage or another, and once when it was too hot in my Hollywood apartment to sleep. I drove up to Mulholland, thinking it would be romantic to sleep between the two faces of LA, an idea that was quickly ruined by an uppity police officer shining his extra terrestrial flashlight in my face just after I’d shut my eyes.

Until recently, I had no desire to proper camp. Having friends who regularly spend swathes of time off the grid and come back with beautiful photos and a fresh batch of inside jokes, plus my newfound rebellion of comfort zones opened me up to the idea. One of my best friends, Callie, said she had a small window of time off work and wanted to take me camping, fulfilling a vow (threat?) she made to me ages ago. It’s been a long time since she and I have had time to just be together one on one, and our relationship is built around a mutual desire for adventure and freedom, so this was a big fuck yes from me. 

She made the three hour drive from LA to my hometown where I currently reside on a Sunday, and we spent the evening with my dad, scarfing pizza and planning our trip. He’s 83 and grew up exploring central California’s “high country,” so he had lots of opinions. The place Callie had set her sights on was closed due to fires, and so my father suggested we go to his favorite place in the world, Lake Edison. 

Nestled in the Sierra mountains, Lake Edison is right where California’s sacral chakra would be. In the human body, the sacral chakra sits in the abdomen, a few inches beneath the belly button, and is thought to be the place where creation originates. It’s fitting then that I’d realize, while looking out on one of the most stunning sunsets I’ve witnessed in recent history, that this is the place where I was conceived.

The story goes that, after much convincing, my dad finally brought my mom to Lake Edison, just once… one inadvertently fateful night in 1984. I can understand her hesitancy based on the fact that my dad was aghast that we wanted to have the car nearby in case of an emergency and for general comfort. He is of the generation that believes the list of camping supplies are, in order of importance: a knife, a sleeping bag, and a skillet. But… it is an undeniably sexy place, and so whatever reservations she had about the experience evidently were not all-encompassing. 

So there I was, in my place of origin, dealing with the image of my parents having tent sex, with one of my best friends in the whole world. It was a coming home of sorts, in more ways than one. Being with Callie, just the two of us, talking about life and where we’ve been and where we are headed was something I didn’t know I needed. 

Much like moving back to my hometown a year and a half ago after being away for twenty years, which is longer than I lived here the first time around. I left a whole life in LA without a plan, but coming home was instinctive. I needed to be back in the place where I started in order to start over. Like most people who forsake their small town for the Big City, the thought of moving home always seemed like absolute failure. And in a way I was admitting defeat, but admitting it freed me in a way that denial could never, no matter how hard I wanted it to.

My biggest hopes and wildest dreams were born with me into this body at the Kaweah Delta hospital in Visalia, CA- the place that, 32 years later, my mother would speak her last words. As she lay in what turned out to be her deathbed, she remarked that the room looked exactly like the one she was in when she gave birth to me. It was a place made for transitions.

I moved back into my childhood bedroom in the house built by my parents out in the country, and then eventually rented a small place in town on the same road as the first home I ever knew. When I’d come back to visit throughout the years I lived far (but not too far) away, I would relish the feeling of sleeping in my bed, alone… a moment for my soul to re-attach to my body, as it belonged only to me. It was the only time I felt I could truly go inward, the room was my sanctuary. Just mine, forever and ever. When I wasn’t here, it sat empty, waiting for my return like the Giving Tree.

When I got home from the camping trip, exhausted and filled with satisfaction, covered in bug bites from one single minute spent in the most glorious meadow anyone has ever seen (worth it), I pulled a tarot card. The Fool. The first card in the deck, represented by the number 0- the number of limitless potential and new beginnings. It’s the start of the hero’s journey.

As I write, I am sitting in my childhood bedroom where the bookshelves are filled with my diaries and journals, and the drawers are filled with first attempts at screenwriting and butterfly clips and hand-written poems about oblivious boys. They are all the foundation for building something new- reminders of who I’ve been and hints of who I am to become.

There is, however, no indication that I would become a camping queen. And yet…

Today brings a full moon in Capricorn that’s all about new beginnings and stepping into a new, more aligned, future. Here’s a good write-up if you’re into that sort of thing.